Friday, March 28, 2014

So much has gone on here at the CDN since my last blog. You’ve heard about some of it…our Spring break trip to New
Orleans where we helped with the St. Bernard Project, what we’ve been learning
in our respective classes at Aquinas, the grace of the many wonderful speakers
at our Inter Community Novitiate. Right now, though, in the midst of Lent, I’d
simply like to tell you about an extremely moving experience we had tonight,
(Thursday, March 27,) during a Day of Reflection and how it connects to a vigil
held at College Church this past Tuesday night… the night Jeffrey Ferguson was
put to death here in Missouri.
Although Days of Reflection are normally on Fridays, this week’s leader,
Sr. Bea, (pronounced "Bay'-uh") started tomorrow's reflection tonight.

Bea
took down all of the framed pictures on one side of the first floor of our
house and taped up very simple but simply profound, sketched drawings of the
Stations of the Cross. As a group,
we prayed the Stations in candlelight, after supper. As we sang “Jesus Walked This Lonely Valley” between
Stations, I found it very difficult to keep my emotions in check.

The
Stations have always had that effect on me.But in particular, Station IV almost literally knocks the breath out of
me.I'm the mother of a 28-year
old son.I can never quite go in
my mind or heart to the place that Mary had to journey with her son, but I’ve
gotten close enough to cry every time.Yes, she IS a model of faithfulness and trust in our God but, still,
she must have felt that her heart was being ripped from her body, watching her
boy being cursed, beaten, mocked and ultimately murdered.

Which
brings me to Jeffrey Ferguson, and all men and women in our country who are on
death row, or who have been put to death as a result of the imposition of the
death penalty. I think of their mothers. I think of their torment… for the
suffering their child has inflicted and for the suffering their child faces. I
think of the love they still have for their child.Their anguish pierces me.And, yes, of course, I think of the mothers and fathers and
family and friends of the victims.Their anguish pierces me. But killing just begets killing.Violence begets violence.Where will it end?

This
isn’t a political statement.I’m
not really looking for affirmation or dialogue, although dialogue is welcome
because I believe it’s the only way we will ever stop hurting each other.This is just me, tired of the ways we
find to inflict pain on each other; just me, believing that our Creator God, who is Love,
and who loves each of us into being, also dispenses infinite Mercy. Mercy that none of us has ever merited or earned.Just me, believing we are all called to
do the same.

Every
so often, when I come across someone in dire straits – say someone begging at
an intersection or a homeless person or someone screaming at no one – I wonder:
why you and not me? And I think: It could’ve been me. I could’ve been born into
abject and viciously cyclical poverty. I could’ve had horrible parents. I
could’ve had few opportunities, little access to good education and employment.
I didn’t, but there are those who do, and none of us chose our starting point.

Inevitably
when I go down that road of questioning, this one eventually comes up: how does
the reality of the situation of radically unequal opportunities comport with my
experience of a loving and just God? The question makes me uncomfortable. I
ponder it for a little bit, then I give up. But I gained a new awareness in
this regard just last week in New Orleans, when we helped rebuild Ms. Vera’s
house, which had been destroyed by Katrina; and in Memphis at the Civil Rights
Museum, when I listened to the subhuman working conditions of Black sanitation
workers against which Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke – this kind of suffering is
not necessary. We can do something about it; that was MLK’s point. Jesus’ too.
All the way back to Moses, in fact.

My
new understanding helped me to reframe my question. The point isn’t about
understanding why them and not me. There shouldn’t be awful starting points -
for anyone. It doesn’t have to be that way. Therein lie the dream and the
mission.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

However, I feel that the gift we received during
Spring break deserves at least this much.

I feel that this story must
be told and retold, as this story is based on a natural disaster that has been
calling forth efforts to unite diverse people to share God’s love by serving
those in need.

Before our New Orleans
experience, I asked novices about what makes the novitiate unique that there is
no such app for that. I heard many responses, but what I would like to share
with you is the very fact that

While it is a communal
adventure, and we learn to live in community with each other, the discernment
is very unique and personal.

It is very real.

We never know until we live
it.

We grow into a deeper
relationship with God.

It’s “Cold and broken
Hallelujah” - it's a challenge and from that challenge comes all the gifts.
They are truly gifts.

We learn how to live for
others.

I would like to share about
this latter one.

Learning to live for others
is lived daily by being present to one another in community, by praying for the needs of the world, for the needs of our
sisters, and for the intentions of those who ask us to pray, etc.

Another way is choosing
ministries (service experiences) based on the needs of others. Each week for a
few hours, we each volunteer to help the poor or marginalized by needs, by
health, or by being a foreign student.

During spring break, as a
community, we decided that we would go to New Orleans, where Katrina hit in 2005, and that we would volunteer
helping rebuilding New Orleans through the St. Bernard Project, here is a short YouTube video (click on link.)

While it was a service, I
feel that we received just as much or actually, even more.

St. Bernard Project
connected us with Ms. Vera, a survivor of Katrina (center of the photo in blue
sweater,) the owner of the house that we were working on. St. Bernard Project
gave us the tools, materials, and the lesson on each task, along with the story
of Ms. Vera.

Ms. Vera lost a grandson
before Katrina hit (he was at a birthday party and was found drowned in the pool.) When
Katrina hit, she evacuated to Mississippi. Her husband (stayed to look after
the pets) was promised by a passing-by-boat that he would be picked up, but
that remained a promise, and he ended up wading through the floodwaters, until
he reached the highway and her sister-in-law was able to pick him up. When they
returned to Louisiana, Ms. Vera’s husband was working on their house, but one
day, his heart’s pace was slow and the next day he passed away. Four years
later, Ms. Vera lost one of her sons in an auto accident, now she is raising
her son’s son, Robby. The week before we arrived to help her, she lost another
grandson who died from leukemia.

In the middle of the photo:
Ms. Vera and her grandson, Robby.

There we were, ready to
help her.

But here it is what really happened, why I feel we received so much
more...

Before we were able to help
(and during our stay), we received a wonderful welcoming, care and hospitality
from Dominican Sisters of Peace, feeding us, touring us around the city, and
making our stay feel like home. They also prayed for Vera, her family, and for
us to have the strength.

Our week seemed to get
viral on our congregations’ digital news, and so, our sisters, too, prayed for
the family, as well as we received their prayers.

One of the group of college
students played a game, I only asked what was the name of the game, but their
response was not only the name, but also welcomed us to play with them, and so
we did. I felt being included, I felt a unity of the same spirit: being there
for others.

When we arrived to the
house where we helped out, Delcy and Amy (part of St. Bernard Project staff) were
very welcoming, appreciative and were very patient teaching us how to mud, sand, and
paint. During breaks, we had very rich conversations with Amy. We felt touched
by those stories and also left us changed. (Amy is on the far left on the
photo.)

From left to right:

Amy, novices Bea and
Christina, Ms. Vera, novices Katy and Kathy.

First day of our
volunteering experience, we ran out of drinking water, and the house had no
drinking water. It was a hot a humid day. I went over to a neighbor, and asked
her to refill our water bottles. She asked me to let her give us new bottles of
water that have been refrigerated. I first refused, as we had our bottles, but
she really wished give us the cold ones, saying: “you are helping my friend and
this is the least I can do for you.” So, I accepted. I talked with her mom a
bit while she was getting the bottles for us. I again, was touched by their
story and their compassion for Ms. Vera.

As the day went by, Ms.
Vera came by and we got to meet her. She gave us a tour on how her house used
to look like before Katrina, and how the new rooms would be used. As the
conversation went by, she shared her story, with tears of sorrow and pain. But
then, her Kindergartener grandson ran by, and that brought her back to the
present, and she cheerfully showed us which room would be her grandson’s.

The four days we volunteered
there, the more we got to know Ms. Vera. She is a wonderful, courageous and
pleasant woman. Her smile itself is very life-giving, and she is so vibrant.
She has been truly a blessing for us, and we also learned how to stay open,
loving and hopeful in times of sorrow and pain.

After we left, the following
day, we had a theological reflection with Sr. Dorothy Trosclair, OP, who helped us integrate what we experienced this week, and where and how God
has been present in all these. It was very insightful and deep reflection and
we really appreciated this experience.

St. Bernard Project is one
of the many organizations that help rebuild New Orleans, rebuilding homes, but
most of all, rebuilding hope and lives.

The story is not just a
story anymore.

In 2005, I heard about
Katrina.

I followed it as it was on
the news.

Each year, I went there and
saw the changes as the city was coming back to life.

I was a tourist.

Resonance with the
novitiate:

I didn’t really know until I had a taste of it. I feel changed.

It was a communal adventure,
were we as individuals came together for the same reason

It has also been unique and
personal: I feel blessed and changed

It is real.

Through the prayers we shared
and received and theological reflection, I feel in deeper relationship with God
and feel ever more passionate about sharing that God is there even in the midst
of deep loss and sorrow.

It’s “Cold and broken
Hallelujah” - it's a challenge (sorrow) and from that challenge comes all the
gifts (love, compassion and hope.) They are truly gifts.

Lent is a time of conversion, we fast, we pray and we do good works as we prepare to renew our baptismal commitment at Easter, recommitting ourselves to be Jesus' disciple. I feel that during this Lent, this 'communal adventure' was more than it sounds. It was really helpful to me to discover God's voice in our heart through others's stories and theological reflection, and gained encouragement to continue being God's disciple and doing God's desire.

*****

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Tuesday, March 4, 2014

I was reminded of this concept at the beginning of the
semester in a place I wasn’t expecting. This
semester I am taking a class on the Torah, taught from the Jewish perspective by
a rabbi. The class has been a
fascinating look at the Jewish scriptures through a new set of lenses. This new way of understanding my Jewish brothers
and sisters’ has challenged my aptitude to articulate my own theology and offered
ample opportunities for deeper reflection.
I’ll give you an example.

Our class began in the very beginning (…do I hear Maria Von
Trapp’s voice in the distance…??) with a discussion on The Creation. Genesis 1:2 describes the state of the “world”
before God acted upon it as “unformed and void.” The Spirit of God (Ruach Elohim) comes,
hovers over the formless void, and creates.
As a modern, when I hear this verse, I usually picture the immense
darkness of outer space, sans stars. For
me, the opposite of created order is something not created, or nothing. Ancients understood the world in a very different
way. For our early ancestors, the opposite
of created order was disorder or chaos. Religion
fulfilled a very important role for them, as it imposed an ordered structure on
a disordered world.

At this point in the class, the Rabbi turned to us, and
asked a “thinking question.” Let me
explain. Our class is quite intimate. Myself and two others comprise the sum total
of registered students. In order to
stimulate discussion (and I expect check that we are doing the readings each
week) part of our homework includes “thinking questions,” that is, discussion questions
of a reflective nature which integrate the weekly reading material with
personal theology. The Rabbi asked us, “So,
the thinking question for this week was: Might we say that part of the role of “religion” is to quiet our fears
and anxieties of chaos by positing an order to the universe? Tell me, how do you see chaos?”

And, honest to
God, my first thought was, “I’m in the novitiate! Forget seeing chaos - I LIVE in it!!” Those of you who have been through novitiate –
you know exactly what I mean.

This notion of chaos and order has followed me since that
first weeks of class. Recently, I was
reminded of a concept that might put structure to my wonderings on this subject
- strange attractors. Through a very
basic education in the new cosmology (and its applied theology) I have come to
understand strange attractors as spontaneous, emergent changes which reorder an
open, dynamic (and chaotic) system. Used
to describe the shape of this spontaneous emergence within Chaos Theory, the strange
attractor imposes a new order within the chaos.
I have been wondering, “What is the strange attractor that is attempting
imposing order upon my own interior chaos this year?”

God.

I learned later that the Hebrew tetragrammation of God’s
name (YHWH) is rooted in a form of the “to be” verb. God gives a name with a root that is causative
(as in God CAUSES "to be"). Just as the Ruach
Elohim came down over the formless void in the beginning, so too, Adonai is
working within me to reorganize my interior structure and form it in a better
image of God’s-self. And this work is not limited just to me. Through my experiences this year, I have come to believe that our call, if we choose to accept it, is to maintain open systems, to listen and be sensitive to the voice of the Spirit. The Lord is
working in all of our interior lives, each and every day.

About the Blog

Learn about the life of novices at the Collaborative Dominican Novitiate (CDN) in St. Louis, Missouri, through our reflections and photos. We hope this blog will be a place where our communities, families, friends and any one else who is interested can come to hear stories about what goes on at the CDN .

Special thanks to the 2011-12 novices Chris, Kelly and Krissie for setting up the blog. Explore the archives to read their stories.